\   . 


FELLOWSHIP  BOOKS 

tratton 


SOLITUDE 


COPYRIGHT    1913 

BY  E.  P.  DUTTON  &  CO. 


SOLITUDE 


Norman  Gate. 


witfi  adoration 


BEFORE  the  brain  of  man  grew  strong 
enough  to  conceive  the  idea  of  an 
Omnipotent  God — a  Solitary  De- 
signer— it  created  shadows  by  the  hundred, 
and  called  them  gods.  Life  had  not  then 
broken  out  into  a  rash  of  cities:  the  flight 
from  Nature  had  not  begun.  Comprehend- 
ing not  even  the  surface  of  the  glory  by  which 
he  was  surrounded,  yet  feeling  urged  to  strug- 
gle toward  knowledge,  man  stood  amazed 
at  the  various  profusion  of  life.  While  per- 
ceiving that  he  was  the  sovereign  animal,  he 
discovered  in  a  flash  his  inability  to  make  a 
blade  of  grass,  though  he  could  use  grass  for 
several  purposes.  To  conquer  material  was 


to 


2030993 


to  wonder  about  the  source  of  material. 
Since  action  was  the  mainspring  of  change, 
and  since  action  was  the  work  of  an  agent,  he 
was  compelled  to  think  that  he  was  living  in 
the  midst  of  invisible  toilers.  Who  lifted 
hyacinths  from  the  ground  into  the  air? 
Who  splintered  the  peaks  of  the  mountain? 
Whose  body  seemed  to  be  imperfectly  fluid 
in  the  river?  Gods  and  goddesses  were  at 
work,  at  play,  at  mischief.  Hills  were  proofs 
of  sinewy  godship;  flowers  were  signs  of 
playfulness;  thorns,  serpents,  chasms,  and 
darkness  were  evidence  of  mischief.  There 
must  be  a  vast  company  of  agents,  because 
manifestations  of  their  skill  were  so  numer- 
ous ;  for  it  was  impossible  to  believe  that  the 
splinterer  of  the  crag  was  also  the  shaper  and 
guardian  of  the  hyacinth.  Having  reached 
this  conclusion,  he  poured  from  his  brain  a 
multitude  of  deities:  he  associated  the  groves 
with  fauns,  the  woods  with  dryads,  the  water- 
lilies  with  naiads,  of  whom  even  so  late  in 
the  story  of  mankind  as  Ovid's  day  there  were 

2 


one  hundred  in  the  river  Anio.  Of  all  diffi- 
cult lessons  for  him  to  learn  the  hardest  was 
that  Solitude  was  companionless.  Her  realm 
was  a  meeting-place  of  whisperers;  it  gave 
off  a  perfume  such  as  he  fancied  might  be 
wafted  from  the  hair  of  goddesses.  Instead 
of  being  consolatory,  it  was  threatening. 
Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  the  creators  of  shad- 
ows were  brought  near  to  one  another  by 

dread  of  their  own  creations,  with  the  result 

' 

of  strengthening  the  tribe  by  the  weakness  of 
each  member.  There  went  with  them  into 
that  confraternity  evil  spirits  uncountable, 
from  whom  we  (who  have  learnt  the  bad  fea- 
tures of  massed  humanity)  often  fly,  in  search 
of  balm,  to  loneliness,  which  to  our  so  distant 
forerunners  was  a  source  of  dismay  in  wood- 
lands peopled  by  Pan  and  his  associates.  Our 
heritage  is  Solitude  as  she  was  before  the  time 
when  man,  not  comprehending  her  soul, 
tricked  her  out  with  gods  and  goddesses,  of 
whom  not  all  were  propitious.  Yet  how 
beautiful  was  the  embroidery  of  imagination! 
3  %  How 


How  sensitive,  how  alert,  must  have  been  the 
fancy  that  saw  in  a  wavering  of  light  on  the 
bole  of  a  tree  the  leap  of  a  Hamadryad  into 
the  heart  of  an  oak!  But  to-day  the  man  who 
does  not  shrink  from  communion  with  his 
private  angel  can  hear,  when  alone  in  the 
wild,  only  the  whispering  he  rejoices  to  hear 
— the  whisper  of  Solitude  found  where  she  is 
ready  to  dispense  her  largest  blessings. 
There  she  anoints  us  with  spikenard  taken 
from  the  box  that  she  keeps  only  in  the  wil- 
derness. Her  ambassadors  mingle  with 
crowds  in  cities  and  soothe  us  in  our  houses; 
but  she  herself  for  ever  stands  in  front  of  her 
ancient  altar,  waiting  for  our  worship  and 
sacrifice;  waiting  to  help  us;  waiting  to  teach 
us  her  intimate  gospel,  a  part  of  which  her 
ambassadors  lose  by  being  ambassadors. 
*%  It  will  be  noticed  soon  that  in  this  essay  I 
have  glanced  hurriedly  at  what  I  think  to  be 
the  least  important  uses  to  which  men  and 
women  put  the  treasures  of  solitude.  I  have 
done  this  not  because  I  am  out  of  sympathy 

4 


with  the  smaller  phases  of  loneliness,  not 
because  some  of  the  varieties  seem  to  be  pre- 
tenders rather  than  acknowledged  rulers,  but 
because  I  feel  how  just  it  is  that  the  largest 
service  of  which  solitude  is  capable,  as  means 
of  tuition  and  comfort,  should  not  lose  in 
treatment  by  the  gain  of  services  less  splendid. 
As  if  for  the  purpose  of  moving  me  to  a  con- 
sideration of  the  wounds  that  can  be  inflicted 
on  the  heart  by  solitude,  a  certain  picture  has 
repeatedly  flashed  into  my  mind  for  a  few 
seconds.  Or  have  these  glimpses  been  shown 
to  me  in  order  that  creatures  lower  than  men 
shall  not  be  excluded  from  my  sympathy? 
Often  as  I  have  been  driven  to  think  of  the 
loneliness — the  almost  unbearable  fever  of 
loneliness— felt  by  some  children  when  the 
desert  of  school  succeeds  the  oasis  of  home,  I 
believe  I  have  thought  still  more  often  of,  for 
example,  the  young  badger  at  the  moment 
when  his  father  turns  upon  him  as  if  he 
were  an  enemy  and  forbids  him,  with  terrible 
emphasis,  the  neighbourhood  of  his  birth- 
5  *%  place. 


place.  Nature  'and  Solitude  are  sisters;  and 
when  they  arrange  for  the  bursting  heart  of 
the  cub  an  exit  from  companionship,  an  en- 
trance into  loneliness,  their  severity  is  almost 
tragic.  The  human  child  returns;  the  cub 
loses,  as  if  in  a  breath,  his  home,  his  teachers, 
his  guardians,  and  his  mother's  warmth  at 
bedtime.  Surely  it  must  be  with  a  heart  in- 
dignant and  bewildered  that  he  searches  for  a 
resting-place  and,  when  it  has  been  found, 
lies  down  with  his  sense  of  loss ;  transient,  no 
doubt,  but  for  a  few  hours  as  sharp  as  any 
sharpness  in  Nature;  for  he  does  not  under- 
stand that  he  has  taken  his  first  step  toward 
a  companionship  dearer  than  the  companion- 
ship of  her  who  fed  his  baby  mouth.  It  may 
be  that  he  has  an  inkling  of  the  solace  to  come. 
I  hope  so.  But  children  leave  home  nursing 
in  their  hearts  the  thousand  pledges  whispered 
in  their  ears  and  kissed  upon  their  lips  by 
parents  about  to  suffer  a  loneliness  other  than 
the  child's.  Yet,  in  spite  of  all  these  pledges, 
many  children,  awake  and  tearful  in  a  dor- 
6 


mitory,  learn  for  their  first  lesson  at  school 
that  unfamiliar  companions  seem  to  add  to 
their  burden  of  loneliness.  As  with  the  cub, 
this  feeling  is  transient;  but  in  later  years  the 
remembrance  of  it  may  serve  to  cause  a  dis- 
like of  solitude,  at  least  till  the  time  when  the 
unfolding  of  destiny  shall  teach  them  to  what 
extent  comfort  can  spring  from  what  in  their 
budding  years  was  little  less  than  a  terror.  If 
their  story  moves  in  accordance  with  Nature's 
design,  they  will  learn  to  love  what  once  they 
detested;  for  to  lovers  solitude  is,  as  it  were, 
a  sweetmeat,  to  gain  which  they  will  offend 
against  sociability  in  half  a  hundred  ways. 
Sirfce  they  bring  back  from  their  excursions 
so  little  to  be  distributed  among  friends  (later 
this  remark  will  be  amplified),  since  their 
chief  desire  is  to  luxuriate  in  melancholy,  and 
since  they  too  often  wound  with  their  wounds 
the  bark  of  trees  in  the  sacrilegious  style  of 
Orlando,  so  that,  because  of  calf-love,  a  beech 
is  sometimes  vaccinated  with  initials  that  de- 
grade a  pillar  of  Solitude's  temple  into  a 

7 


hoarding  for  Cupid's  half-confidences,  I  do 
not  fear  to  reckon  this  phase  of  loneliness 
among  the  varieties  deserving  only  a  small  al- 
lowance of  my  space.  Of  more  help  to  his 
fellow-creatures  is  the  bookworm  who,  for 
many  hours  every  day,  converts  a  library  into 
a  dungeon  where,  intolerant  of  warders,  he 
believes  himself  to  be  one  of  Solitude's  high- 
priests.  Even  if  this  library  is  a  collection 
of  only  moderate  size,  he  is  in  a  thousand 
cities  at  one  and  the  same  time.  If  he  is 
reading,  for  example,  "War  and  Peace,"  he 
holds  in  front  of  his  eyes  a  very  regiment  of 
characters.  His  loneliness  is  apparent,  not 
real.  It  is  natural  for  him  to  become  grave, 
but  if  he  becomes  sour  or  improperly  taciturn, 
then  he  is  guilty  of  high  treason  against  the 
kings  and  queens  and  emperors  at  whose 
hands  he  has  received  favours  more  royal  than 
the  favours  of  unlettered  monarchs.  Thack- 
eray knights  him;  Shakespeare  confers  on  him 
a  peerage.  Among  modern  sages  De  Quincey 
stands  out  as  the  one  by  whom  this  variety  of 
8 


loneliness  was  most  frequently  mistaken  for 
genuine  solitude.  If  he  had  sat,  bookless,  in 
a  hay-loft  for  a  few  hours  every  day  of  the 
week,  his  claim  would  have  been  easier  for  us 
to  accept.  Living  in  a  huddle  of  books,  he 
could  not  move  without  elbowing  an  immor- 
tal. 

^  In  what  is  the  least  convincing  of  his  mel- 
low essays,  Charles  Lamb,  who  perhaps  wrote 
it  to  prove  that  he  had  almost  enough  magic 
to  make  black  seem  white,  contrasted  the  still- 
ness of  a  desert  with  the  stillness  of  a  Quakers' 
Meeting,  and  declared  the  former  to  be,  in 
his  opinion,  but  a  makeshift  for  the  latter. 
His  ideal  could  result  only  from  a  mingling 
of  silence  and  society,  which  he  perversely 
mistook  for  solitude,  though  by  what  miracle 
coughings  and  sneezings  and  scraping  of  feet 
and  clearing  of  throats  were  excluded  from 
the  Meeting  he  did  not  trouble  to  explain. 
The  real  lover  of  loneliness  does  not  wish  to 
be  kept  in  countenance  by  either  a  small  or 
a  large  number  of  his  fellows  sitting  tongued- 
9  ^  tied 


tied  in  a  building.  He  finds  it  hard  to  imagine 
a  drearier  substitute  for  a  desert.  Lamb  be- 
longed to  the  centre  of  his  nation — to  the  me- 
tropolis. Chimney-pots  pleased  him  more 
than  woodpeckers.  If  this  had  not  been  so 
he  could  never  have  brought  himself  to  be- 
lieve that  a  Quakers7  Meeting  was  a  better 
home  for  solitude  than  the  Sahara.  If  that 
desert  could  smile,  Lamb's  words  would,  as- 
suredly, cause  it  to  smile,  as  they  cause  to 
smile  those  who  understand  how  to  muse  and 
learn  and  broaden  in  complete  loneliness,  and 
then  how  best  to  repay  their  teacher.  Among 
these  enthusiasts,  who  may  be  looked  upon  as 
the  private  pupils  of  woodpeckers,  it  is  an 
article  of  faith  that  Robinson  Crusoe  hardly 
used  to  the  best  advantage  his  glorious  chance 
of  solitude,  because  it  pleased  him  to  dine 
with  four  companions — a  parrot,  a  dog,  and 
two  cats.  Worse  than  this,  the  parrot  could 
talk!  For  myself  I  never  read  Defoe's  classic 
without  thinking  that  a  country  so  laden  with 
riches  as  England  ought  to  devote  a  desert 
10 


island,  after  building  a  hut  and  stocking  it 
with  the  actual  necessaries  of  life,  to  such  of 
her  great  men  as  may  feel  the  need  of  a  few 
solitary  months.  Each  would  take  his  turn; 
gather  a  harvest;  resign  the  harvest-field. 
No  dogs  would  be  allowed,  to  bully  star-fish 
on  the  beach.  To  apply  for  a  permit  for  cats 
would  be  to  acknowledge  an  amateurish  idea 
of  solitude.  Among  the  devotees  of  my  ac- 
quaintance there  is  not  one  to  whom  the  com- 
panionship of  a  dog  does  not  seem,  at  a  time 
when  his  prevailing  wish  is  to  bare  his  heart 
in  the  sight  of  loneliness,  to  be  a  lessening  of 
his  chance  of  comfort.  Persecution  is  not  one 
of  the  finger-posts  directing  him  to  the  shrine. 
A  worried  hedgehog,  a  panting  rabbit,  is  a 
blot  upon  his  holiday.  Benignly  he  must  go, 
benignly  stay,  benignly  return;  and  he  can 
trust  only  himself. 

^  Perhaps  the  solitude  nearest  in  essence  to 
the  sacred  solitude  of  forests  or  deserted  up- 
lands is  that  felt  by  the  man  from  whom  Time 
has  stolen  the  activities  by  means  of  which  he 
1 1  ^  was 


was  accustomed  (when  liberal  powers  were 
granted)  to  betake  himself  to  the  heart  of  lone- 
liness, there  to  find  first  a  sedative,  then  a 
stimulant.  For  him  the  world  has  gone  too 
often  round  the  sun;  his  poor  remnant  of 
force  with  difficulty  suffices  to  keep  him  from 
learning  to-day — to-morrow — the  fringe  of 
supreme  solitude,  one  mystery  beyond  the 
mystery  in  which  we  grope  for  illumination. 
If  he  has  availed  himself  frequently  of  the 
blessings  of  the  unpeopled  wild,  the  desire  to 
see  again  the  haunts  of  past  meditation  is  al- 
most the  strongest  desire  left  in  him.  This 
is  often  so  intense  that  he  can  withdraw  him- 
self from  his  surroundings  more  than  he  was 
able  to  do  at  any  other  time  in  his  life.  A  dog 
leaping  on  to  his  knees  will  not  rouse  him; 
his  granddaughter's  kiss  cannot  bring  him 
home  from  the  imagined  glade  where  once 
the  squirrel's  activity  seemed  little  more  than 
his  own.  While  he  sits  helpless  in  his  arm- 
chair he  leaps  the  five-barred  gates  of  long 
ago.  But  if  he  decides  to  hold  a  review,  in- 
12 


stead  of  conveying  himself  in  spirit  to  the 
favourite  oaks  of  his  heart,  then  the  forest 
marches  to  him  in  nobler  fashion  than  Birnam 
wood  marched  toward  Macbeth.  He  sees 
that  stupendous  infantry  go  by  and  salutes  it 
with  a  flush  of  his  face.  She  whom  he  wor- 
shipped in  the  autumn  of  his  strength  denies 
him  not  a  leaf,  not  a  branch,  not  a  trunk.  Is 
not  this  withered  Orpheus,  singing  the 
beeches  to  his  doorstep,  closer  to  solitude  than 
the  bookworm  who,  though  solitary,  is  shoul- 
dered from  city  to  city  by  a  hurly-burly  of 
immortals?  There  is  no  escape  from  the 
present  so  complete  as  his  escape.  It  is  akin 
to  a  rehearsal  of  death. 

<%  Though  I  have  written  these  words  in 
memory  of  one  to  whom  a  forest  seemed  a 
visible  prayer  (so  great  was  his  adoration), 
to  whom  a  brook  seemed  a  melted  comet  (so 
active  was  his  fancy) ,  for  whom  silence  con- 
tained the  word  of  God  (so  keen  was  his 
hearing),  I  have  erected  only  half  of  his  de- 
served memorial.  With  so  many  of  us  it  is 
13  ^a 


a  failing  to  look  down  too  often,  to  look  up 
too  seldom.  It  was  not  thus  with  him. 
Greatly  as  he  healed  himself  among  the  col- 
ours of  the  sunlit  woodlands  and  moors,  he 
used  stars  for  healers  when  his  grief  was,  like 
the  sword  of  Duty,  double-edged.  He  it  was 
who  taught  me  to  have  a  patron  group  of 
stars,  and  how,  when  autumn  leaves  had  fal- 
len, to  stand  in  a  narrow  lane  not  far  from 
a  peculiarly  noble  ash  and  wait  till  Orion 
crossed  the  road,  climbed  into  the  tree,  and 
then  slowly  descended  from  the  branches.  To 
watch  that  dignitary  of  the  heavens  was  by 
itself  a  balm.  I  have  trusted  many  griefs  to 
my  patron,  never  without  becoming  steadier 
of  soul,  never  without  thinking  gratefully  of 
him  who  taught  me  to  wear  upon  my  breast 
Orion's  silver  badge.  Though  our  sun's  next- 
door  neighbour  in  space  is  the  constellation 
of  Cygnus,  which  is  between  twenty  and  thirty 
billions  of  miles  distant  from  him,  the  gulf 
of  ether  seems  to  be  bridged  not  by  light 
alone,  but  also  by  a  sense  of  brotherhood.  It 


would  be  strange  if  these  celestial  Liners, 
built  in  the  same  dockyard,  ploughing  the 
same  ocean,  commanded  by  the  same  Admiral, 
did  not  beckon  All's  well  to  each  other. 
While  we  are  being  towed  along  in  a  pin- 
nace by  the  sun  we  have  plenty  of  time  to 
watch  the  giants  of  the  Fleet,  to  learn  their 
names,  to  consider  their  evolutions,  to  remem- 
ber their  association  with  us,  which  is  not  less 
because  the  sea-room  between  ship  and  ship 
is  a  space  so  vast.  If  this  be  done,  we  change 
cold  strangers  into  warm  companions.  Think 
of  that  superb  cruiser  Arcturus,  with  a  speed 
of  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  a  second,  a 
miracle  of  discipline,  unarmoured,  gunless, 
crimeless!  It  is  well  for  some  of  us  to  choose 
him  for  our  favourite  ship,  instead  of  letting 
him  go  by  unsaluted.  As  soon  as  we  have 
special  friends  in  the  Fleet,  we  know  where 
to  look  for  heartening  counsel,  for  lessons  of 
faithfulness  and  rectitude.  After  standing 
on  a  moorland  at  dead  of  night,  with  millions 
of  disciplinarians  gazing  earnestly  at  me,  I 
15  |% never 


never  take  home  all  the  grief  with  which  I 
left  home.  If  I  feel  that  I  am  too  far  away 
from  my  patron  I  can  spring  from  earth  into 
the  midst  of  his  nebula  by  the  help  of  the 
leaping-pole  of  imagination.  Why  should 
we  use  only  half  of  our  heritage  of  solaces? 
We  let  daisies  outshine  the  stars.  It  is  too 
easy  to  look  down.  Yet  the  stars  know  how 
to  cure  the  illness  of  shaking  lips.  Perhaps 
when  this  world  becomes  so  densely  thronged 
by  the  human  race  that  solitude  of  the  finest 
quality  will  be  as  rare  as  gold  in  sea-water 
we  shall  use  the  starry  heavens  with  more 
understanding  than  we  have  hitherto  used 
them.  We  seem  to  be  preparing  a  maelstrom 
for  ourselves.  When  we  have  done  so,  we 
may  learn  to  change  the  Pleiades  from 
passers-by  to  bosom-friends.  At  present  we 
allow  a  primrose  to  eclipse  Arcturus. 
<%  For  a  loyal  lover  of  solitude  there  is  this 
danger,  that  the  horses  of  enthusiasm  are 
likely  to  run  away  with  him  as  soon  as  they 
feel  upon  their  backs  the  slightest  touch  of 
16 


the  whip  of  recollection.  If  he  thinks,  as  I 
think,  that  life  improves  with  each  step  tak- 
ing him  away  from  bricks  and  mortar  toward 
a  city  of  boles  and  branches  and  leaves,  where 
such  shy  civilians  as  woodpeckers  and  doves 
are  to  be  met  with,  and  where  squirrels  may 
be  said  to  put  nuts  on  deposit  in  the  Bank  of 
Foresight;  if  he  thinks,  as  I  think,  that  the 
tyranny  of  the  collar-stud  is  one  of  the  pulses 
of  revolt;  if  he  feels,  as  I  so  often  feel,  that 
at  times  it  is  a  punishment  to  sit  among  his 
fellow-creatures  and  stretch  his  legs  under  the 
convivial  mahogany  of  the  universe,  he  does 
not  of  necessity  deserve  to  be  called  mopish 
or  melancholy  or- sour.  His  retreats  from  so- 
ciability may  be  looked  upon  as  a  tonic  en- 
abling him  to  be  a  better  companion  for  those 
whom  he  attracts,  and  by  whom  he  is  at- 
tracted. And  if  he  makes  the  best  use  of  soli- 
tude, which,  like  all  other  natural  blessings, 
can  be  mismanaged,  he  will  not  fail  to  carry 
back  with  him,  as  a  gift  for  his  friends,  a 
part  of  the  dignity  of  a  sun-soaked  wood,  or 
17  $&  a 


a  part  of  the  contentment  that  seems  to  be  ex- 
pressed in  a  deep  chuckle  by  a  leisured  brook. 
He  who  has  heard  in  late  April  an  assembly 
of  bees  singing  their  Hallelujah  Chorus  in 
the  blossom  of  a  wild  pear  cannot  refrain 
from  giving  to  his  acquaintances  a  cheerful 
account  of  that  concert.  A  living  poet  has 
remarked  upon  his  inability  to  feel  at  his  ease 
as  a  member  of  the  human  race.  Though  his 
prison  is  twenty-four  thousand  miles  in  cir- 
cumference, he  chafes  against  its  narrowness, 
and  looks  without  success  among  his  fellow- 
captives  for  spirits  to  act  as  balm  for  his  own. 
In  the  background  of  his  mind  there  is  a  sense 
of  discomfort,  a  subtle  intimation  harrowing 
enough  to  be,  as  it  were,  a  hornet  in  his  brain. 
The  careful  user  of  the  riches  of  solitude, 
while  sympathetic  toward  a  state  of  feeling 
that  he  knows  to  be  neither  trivial  nor  stupid, 
cannot  prevent  himself  from  wondering  if  the 
poet  has  as  yet  learnt  more  than  a  very  few 
words  in  the  language  of  loneliness,  of  which 
even  the  alphabet  is  beautiful.  Because  con- 
18 


solation  did  not  come  to  him  at  the  first  beck- 
oning, because  what  was  finally  learnt  by 
heart  was  a  matter  of  close  study,  he  suspects 
the  poet  of  being  an  impatient  scholar.  Be 
this  as  it  may,  the  thorough  student  is  not  slow 
in  discovering  how  in  the  rush  of  life  he  finds 
material  that  can  best  be  annotated  by  him 
when  he  is  alone,  with  turf  for  a  floor  and 
sky  for  a  ceiling;  and  also  that  in  his  solitary 
haunts  he  finds  material  to  be  annotated  best 
where  men  are  as  numerous  as  leaves.  He  is 
here  to  pick  some  oakum  for  God.  Because 
he  sees  the  value  of  exchange  he  can  protect 
himself  from  becoming  either  as  sour  as  a 
crab-apple  or  as  grave  as  a  Scots  pine.  When 
he  has  reached  this  knowledge  he  can  be 
trusted  among  the  consolations  and  tempta- 
tions of  solitude;  but  not  till  then. 
*%  If  we  care  to  be  fanciful  we  may  pretend 
that  very  long  ago  the  earth  ran  away  from 
home  in  a  passion  of  unsociability,  thus  sup- 
plying us  with  a  vivid  example  of  the  way  in 
which  the  solitary  and  the  gregarious  have 
19  ^Ibeen 


been  linked  together  in  the  story  of  life. 
For,  though  each  of  the  children  of  the  sun 
has  succeeded  in  becoming  a  celestial  Diog- 
enes, with  its  own  tub  of  space,  yet  not  one 
of  them  has  been  able  to  break  the  law  of  the 
family  allegiance.  The  Milky  Way  is  sown 
with  proofs  that  in  the  whole  of  the  universe 
there  is  not  to  be  found  a  truant  totally 
emancipated.  If  we  descend  from  a  Diogenes 
of  flaming  gas  to  a  Diogenes  of  flesh  and 
blood,  who,  in  attempting  to  cut  himself  off 
from  the  tribe,  has  chosen  to  look  for  an  ir- 
ritant rather  than  an  ointment  in  solitude,  we 
find,  as  he  himself  finds,  that  his  tub  stands 
less  for  education  than  for  warning.  It  is  a 
rallying-place  for  the  curious;  it  defeats  the 
aim  of  its  occupant;  it  produces  what  we  nat- 
urally expect  a  misused  quality  to  produce — 
a  distorted  brain,  an  unwholesome  heart. 
Nature  is  like  a  verb  of  which  all  but  the 
imperative  mood  has  been  lost.  Innumerable 
epochs  ago  she  fixed  the  law  of  association 
and  the  law  of  disassociation,  appointing  a 
20 


limit  of  time  for  the  working  of  each.  Till 
the  cub  had  learnt  the  crafts  of  hiding,  pur- 
suing, killing,  she  caused  the  law  of  associa- 
tion to  operate  with  steady  exactness;  when 
the  cub  was  master  of  all  the  necessary  crafts, 
she  caused  the  law  of  disassociation  to  operate 
with  fierce  precision,  never  relaxing  it  till  the 
time  had  come  for  increase.  Neither  on  the 
earth  nor  in  the  sky  was  Diogenes  among  her 
imperatives,  though  she  appointed  seasons  of 
loneliness  for  her  creatures,  perhaps  for  the 
purpose  of  adding  intensity  to  the  next  com- 
panionship. When  we  remember  that  the 
race  to  which  we  belong  was  reared  in  this 
sharp  discipline,  we  are  helped  to  understand 
why  it  is  that  there  are  times  when  so  many 
of  us  have  what  is  almost  a  feverish  desire  to 
wander  by  ourselves  in  the  forest  or  on  the 
moorland,  searching  perhaps  for  what  gre- 
gariousness  has  stolen  from  loneliness. 
<%  Whatever  may  be  the  reason  for  this  im- 
pulse, it  is  true  that  the  impulse  is  still  active, 
especially  among  the  most  healthy,  the  most 
21  ^8  reflective, 


reflective,  the  most  observant,  for  whom  side- 
issues  of  beauty  have  sprung  up  in  such  num- 
bers as  to  make  the  present  alluring  enough 
of  itself,  without  ancestral  allurements  too 
shadowy  to  be  comprehended.  We  shall  not 
look  in  vain  to  the  lives  of  these  men  for  ex- 
amples of  what  I  venture  to  call  convulsive 
truancy,  since  nearly  all  of  them  are  sum- 
moned from  time  to  time  by  a  voice  that, 
though  it  speaks  in  an  undertone,  is  heard 
above  all  other  voices.  To  resist  is  to  wound 
the  brain,  and  this  wound  can  be  healed  only 
by  obedience.  If  it  be  possible,  it  is  best  for 
him  who  hears  this  softest  of  imperatives  to 
set  his  work  aside,  desert  conventions,  and 
trudge  toward  loneliness  till  he  can  no  longer 
hear  the  faintest  whisper  of  what  had  been, 
while  he  was  seated  at  his  task,  so  beautiful 
an  example  of  piercing  gentleness.  Though 
I  have  few  intimate  friends,  I  count  among 
them  three  men  for  whom  this  voice  sounds 
with  an  appeal  hardly  to  be  resisted,  even 
when  duty  has  the  first  claim  upon  their  time ; 
22 


and  two  of  them  think  it  a  small  sacrifice  to 
give  up  a  night's  rest  for  the  purpose  of  fin- 
ishing what  would  have  been  finished  in  the 
daytime  but  for  the  appeal  of  distant  solitude. 
It  is  not  enough  for  them  to  neglect  work  for 
an  hour;  it  is  not  enough  to  sit  in  a  chair  and 
by  the  exercise  of  fancy  to  turn  the  hearth- 
rug into  a  field  of  cowslips,  the  mantelpiece 
into  a  branch  leafy  enough  to  hide  a  calling 
wood-dove.  Pleasant  as  are  the  expedients 
of  fancy,  the  contributions  of  memory,  they 
cannot  prevent  them  from  hearing  the  voice 
that  knows  in  what  way  to  fill  undertones 
with  an  intensity  beyond  the  reach  of  loud- 
ness.  Because  I  have  known  them  to  be  so 
fevered  by  this  message  as  to  obey  within  a 
few  minutes  of  receiving  it,  I  feel  justified  in 
speaking  of  convulsive  truancy.  I  hope  that 
the  call  of  distant  solitude  comes  to  many, 
and  that  many  can  answer  it  as  it  ought  to  be 
answered. 

%  Everybody  who  tries  to  think  of  himself 

as  a  visitor  being  shown  over  his  brain  must 

23 


be  astonished  by  the  perfection  of  the  work 
designed  and  carried  out  in  the  Makeshift 
Department.  No  one  knows  better  than  the 
manager  of  this  department  that  solitude — • 
the  genuine  article — belongs  to  spaces  where 
Quietude  has  not  been  stoned  to  death  by 
bricklayers.  The  best  quality  is  the  concern 
of  another  part  of  the  works;  it  is  his  duty 
to  supply  the  second-rate,  the  third-rate,  the 
fourth-rate,  and  he  fulfils  this  office  with 
dazzling  ability  and  promptness.  If  we  want 
the  kind  that  enables  us  to  carry  on  a  con- 
versation with  a  friend  in  the  street  while 
we  count  the  tree-trunks  that  stand  up,  like 
masts  of  ships,  in  the  woodland  ocean  of 
hyacinths  from  which  we  have  recently  re- 
turned, we  may  have  it  for  the  asking.  If  we 
want  the  kind  that  enables  us,  while  forcing 
our  way  in  a  city  through  a  jungle  of  shoul- 
ders and  elbows,  to  be  unaware  of  obstruction, 
we  may  have  it  for  the  asking.  If  we  want 
the  kind  that  enables  us  to  hear  above  the 
loudest  clap  of  thunder  the  voice  of  a  dead 

24 


friend,  we  may  have  it  for  the  asking.  The 
workers  put  bees  to  shame;  the  manager  is 
affable ;  the  makeshifts  are  given  away  by  the 
million. 

*fe  However  refreshing  these  imitations  of 
solitude — solitude  preserving  the  original  de- 
sign— may  prove  for  those  of  us  by  whom 
the  best  can  be  seldom,  if  ever,  reached,  they 
resemble  the  authentic  quality  not  much  more 
closely  than  a  paper  rose  resembles  a  living 
rose.  If  six  persons  were  drawn  up  in  front 
of  me,  three  of  whom  had  been  compelled 
for  many  years  by  circumstances  to  accept 
presents  from  the  Makeshift  Department, 
while  the  three  others  had  been  able  from 
time  to  time  to  enjoy  solitude  in  lonely  land- 
scapes, I  believe  I  could  separate  the  blest 
from  the  half-blest.  The  victory  that  is  al- 
ways being  struggled  for  amid  surroundings 
likely  to  cause  defeat  marks  a  man's  face 
otherwise  than  equable  conditions  mark  it. 
Common  effects  of  solitude,  when  it  is  used 
in  the  way  in  which  it  was  meant  to  be  used 
25  tifc  —first 


— first  as  a  rest  from  social  life,  then  as  a 
preparation  for  social  life — are  dignity, 
broad-mindedness,  and  a  serene  acceptance  of 
much  that  in  days  before  the  discipline  of 
loneliness  would  have  occasioned  small  re- 
volts against  the  seeming  mismanagement  of 
affairs  by  Destiny.  What  observer  has  not 
noticed  the  relationship  between  solitude  and 
courtesy?  It  would  be  strange  if  the  deco- 
rous assemblage  of  trees  in  a  forest  (where 
natural  solemnity  compels  us  to  think  how 
far  less  significant  is  the  solemnity  of  a  ca- 
thedral) failed  to  have  a  good  effect  upon 
our  manners.  It  would  be  strange  if  some  of 
us,  when  in  the  presence  of  a  mighty  oak,  did 
not  feel  ourselves  to  be  pupils  rather  than 
masters,  and  did  not  seek  to  learn  lessons  of 
sobriety  and  patience,  in  the  hope  of  being 
intelligent  enough  to  apply  these  lessons  to 
the  conduct  of  our  daily  life.  If  there  were 
fees  to  pay,  I  should  be  in  debt  to  the  extent 
of  at  least  a  hundred  pounds  to  a  great  beech 
that  stands  in  a  park  in  South  Warwickshire. 
26 


Though  I  have  known  him  for  more  than 
twenty, years,  only  once  have  I  seen  a  human 
creature  pay  him  reverence.  Across  thirty- 
five  miles  of  Shakespeare's  county  how  often 
has  he  called  to  me  in  the  piercing  undertone 
that  he  must  have  learnt  from  Solitude  her- 
self! Several  times  I  have  gone  to  him  when 
his  invitation  has  been  too  thrilling  to  be  re- 
sisted. I  have  rested  my  hand  upon  his 
trunk,  as  if  upon  the  shoulder  of  a  friend, 
and  have  stood  vaguely  comparing  my  secret 
with  his,  before  sitting  down  on  a  rough 
bench — one  of  his  tremendous  feet — and  look- 
ing up  to  the  leafy  roof  of  his  school.  It  is 
not  because  he  is  so  gigantic  a  schoolmaster 
that  I  feel  so  contented  to  be  his  pupil.  It  is 
not  because  he  seems  to  have  been  designed 
as  a  note  of  exclamation  for  a  marvellous 
sentence  spoken  three  or  four  hundred  years 
ago  by  Mystery.  Perhaps  if  I  were  a  more 
intelligent  pupil  I  might  discover  why  it  is 
that  of  all  the  beeches  known  and  loved  by 
me  in  many  shires  this  beech  calls  me  with 
27  *K  the 


the  most  appealing  voice  and  comforts  me  in 
the  surest  manner.  Again,  if  mortality  were 
not  a  stumbling-block  I  might  be  able  to  dis- 
cover why  it  is  that  I  never  sit  on  the  bench, 
underneath  the  variegated  ceiling  of  his  class- 
room, without  going  on  a  mental  journey  to 
fetch  my  mother  to  sit  beside  me  and  listen 
to  the  expression  of  my  gratitude  to  her  for 
the  countless  sacrifices  of  herself,  in  the  days 
when  I  was  too  young  to  understand  what, 
even  now,  I  can  understand  only  in  part. 
What  could  be  more  cleansing?  What  could 
better  prepare  me  for  going  back  to  my  kind 
and  being  a  wholesome  companion  for  my 
friends?  Since  one  of  my  creeds  is  this,  that 
I  can  never  think  tenderly  of  my  mother  with- 
out becoming  an  improved  man,  it  follows 
that  the  place  where,  because  of  an  influence 
not  to  be  fathomed,  I  am  most  moved  to  desire 
her  return  is  a  hallowed  place.  And  it  fol- 
lows also  that,  after  being  thus  prepared  for 
association  with  my  fellow-creatures,  I  can 
hardly  fail  (unless  I  shame  my  mother  by 
28 


trying  to  fail)  to  be  of  better  service  to  my 
friends  than  I  was  before  I  travelled  thirty- 
five  miles  to  school.  This  brings  me  to  an 
important  consideration. 
*fe  The  man  in  whose  heart  there  lives  a  con- 
stant wish  to  repay  Solitude  for  her  kindness 
to  him,  by  sharing  among  friends  and  ac- 
quaintances the  treasures  revealed  to  him  by 
loneliness,  is  the  man  who  has  been  least  spoilt 
by  solitude.  We  must  consider  not  only  the 
naked  gift,  but  the  manner  in  which  a  re- 
cipient clothes  the  gift;  for  if  it  be  the  single 
aim  of  a  man  to  use  this  balm  for  himself, 
without  caring  in  the  smallest  degree  to  prove 
in  his  social  life  the  healing  effect  of  what 
has  so  ungrudgingly  been  put  at  his  disposal 
by  Nature,  then  he  is  unjust  to  the  balm,  to 
himself,  and  to  the  giver  of  the  balm.  We 
are  prone  to  suspect  of  selfishness  those  who 
tell  us  that  one's  company,  two's  none,  be- 
cause we  fear  that  they  intend  not  to  be  broad- 
ened by  the  education  of  loneliness,  but  rather 
to  be  narrowed.  Yet  here  we  need  to  set  a 
29  ^  good 


good  example  of  broad-mindedness,  and  to 
wait  long  before  deciding  that  they  are  using 
solitariness  as  a  luxury  strictly  personal.  Com- 
panionship can  cause  heavy  losses — losses 
such  as  many  of  us  shrink  from  bearing.  If 
we  insist  on  being  alone,  in  order  to  gather 
a  fruitful  harvest,  we  shall  not  have  done  our 
duty  unless  we  invite  a  large  company  to  our 
harvest-home.  If  we  wander  "as  lonely  as  a 
cloud,"  not  because  we  want  to  till  with 
Memory's  ploughshare  the  fields  of  long  ago, 
not  because  we  want  to  use  solitude  for  the 
most  vital  of  all  purposes  (which  is  to  be 
discussed  later  in  this  essay) ,  but  only  because 
we  are  anxious  not  to  miss  either  the  seem- 
ing strengthlessness  of  a  valley  or  the  bulging 
sinews  of  a  muscular  landscape,  we  must  re- 
member without  ceasing  to  collect  for  others 
as  well  as  for  ourselves.  We  must  reflect 
light.  Though  we  cannot  give  sunshine,  we 
can  give  moonlight.  If  we  do  not  take  to  the 
bedside  of  a  sick  friend  the  rainbow  we 
watched  while  leagues  away  from  our  fellow- 
30 


creatures,  we  cheat  ourselves,  the  sufferer,  and 
—in  a  sense — the  rainbow  also.  A  hermit 
flower  does  not  blossom  for  one  beholder.  If 
we  are  so  fortunate  as  to  find  it,  we  shall  do 
well  to  sit  beside  it,  learn  it  in  words,  and 
then,  leaving  it  behind  in  the  hope  that  it  will 
be  found  by  other  deserving  eyes  and  again 
be  translated,  take  it  home  and  cause  it  to 
bloom  in  as  many  places  as  possible.  Though 
we  cannot  prove  solitude  to  be  a  designed 
blessing,  we  can  prove  it  not  to  be  a  designed 
curse.  By  examining  the  wise  use  of  it  made 
by  Nature  we  can  ourselves  learn  how  to  use 
it  in  wisdom.  At  one  time  she  employs  it  as 
a  sedative,  at  another  as  a  stimulant.  She 
drives  back  to  community  the  creature  she 
drove  from  community,  after  fitting  him  by 
improvement  to  be  an  improver.  This  is  one 
of  our  greatest  lessons.  Having  gathered  in 
the  harvest,  we  must,  if  we  wish  to  do  our 
duty,  send  out  invitations  broadcast  to  our  har- 
vest-home. If  we  conduct  this  festival  with 
but  a  small  remnant  of  the  boyishness  that 
31  %  marked 


marked  us  in  the  days  before  we  had  been 
driven  by  various  disappointments  and  per- 
plexities and  griefs  to  look  for  steadiness  of 
soul  where,  till  then,  we  had  not  known  that 
a  chance  of  recovery  was  waiting  for  us,  we 
shall  have  lost  less  than  we  have  gained. 
Solitude  may  be  said  to  weed  laughter.  She 
gives  us  a  distaste  for  what  is  trivial.  But 
though  she  advises  us  to  laugh  less  and  reflect 
more,  she  teaches  us  the  best  sort  of  gravity, 
which  is  a  mingling  of  the  serious  and  the 
mellow.  Those  who  love  her  most  and  un- 
derstand her  best  feel  inclined  to  whisper 
when  they  pass  into  one  of  her  sanctuaries. 
Though  among  my  Nature-loving  friends 
there  are  several  animated  talkers,  there  is 
not  one  of  them  who  does  not  instinctively 
lower  his  voice  on  entering  a  wood,  even  if 
the  matter  in  debate  is  at  the  red-hot  point. 
There  seems  to  be  a  warning  in  the  air. 
Though  Solitude  has  educated  herself  past  the 
want  of  notice-boards,  she  somehow  succeeds 
in  conveying  to  us  her  opinion  that  the  loud 

32 


of  lung  ought  to  be  prosecuted.  She  is  right. 
Think  what  an  outrage  the  nasal  effrontery 
of  a  banjo  would  be  in  the  irregular  cloisters 
of  a  forest! 

<%  When  Jesus  of  Nazareth  went  into  the 
wilderness,  not,  be  it  noted,  to  escape  from 
temptation,  but  to  be  tempted,  perhaps  He 
desired  His  action  to  stand  for  a  pointed  criti- 
cism of  such  thinkers  as  had  persuaded  them- 
selves that  sin  existed  only  where  men  herded 
together.  It  is  significant  that  He  did  not 
look  for  Satan  in  towns  and  villages,  though 
a  pregnant  part  of  His  teaching  had  declared 
wealth  and  luxury  to  be  the  enemies  of  the  soul. 
When  helped  by  these  manifestations,  Satan 
found  it  much  easier  to  turn  mankind  away 
from  the  duty  of  holiness;  and  where  these 
manifestations  were  common,  there,  we  may 
presume,  the  Evil  Genius  of  humanity  was 
present.  Why,  then,  should  the  towns,  the 
haunts  of  the  rich,  the  villages,  the  too-fertile 
valleys  (destroyers  of  thrift  and  simplicity) 
have  been  rejected  and  the  wilderness  chosen 
33  ^  3-S 


as  a  place  sure  to  contain  the  Devil,  unless  it 
was  for  the  purpose  of  preaching  to  eremites 
a  sermon  of  action?  From  farther  east  had 
come  the  gospel  of  flight.  Men  had  been 
taught  to  be  fugitives  from  evil.  Instead  of 
being  directed  to  march  boldly  into  the  arena, 
there  to  battle  against  the  foe,  they  were  en- 
couraged to  turn  their  backs,  to  flee  into  the 
mountains  (as  if  there  were  a  sin-line  to  pass) , 
to  live  alone,  to  be  good  because  they  had  no 
incentives  to  be  bad.  It  was  a  policy  of  self- 
ishness, a  creed  of  cowards.  Since  Christ 
could  not  stand  face  to  face  with  the  fugitives 
from  the  arena,  in  which  they  had  dropped 
their  weapons  of  righteousness,  and  since  He 
must  have  grieved  because  of  their  failure  to 
be  valiant,  it  is  probable  that  He  decided  to 
act  the  sermon  He  could  not  speak.  By 
choosing  the  wilderness  as  a  place  in  which 
He  could  not  fail  to  find  Satan,  He  struck  a 
killing  blow  at  the  fallacy  so  long  nursed  by 
eremites;  by  remaining  there  for  only  forty 
days  He  showed  that  solitude  should  not  be  a 

34 


lifelong  passion;  by  faring  nobly  while  in  the 
desert  He  indicated  the  worth  of  a  brief  with- 
drawal from  life  lived  in  a  community;  by 
returning  with  a  harvest  of  good  He  preached 
the  duty  that  all  reflective  worshippers  of 
solitude  incessantly  remember — the  duty  of 
taking  back  a  means  to  uplift  communal  life, 
the  duty  of  sharing  the  wholesomeness  gained, 
the  victory  won,  the  heart  gravely  mellowed ; 
for  we  must  be  fertilized,  not  sterilized,  by 
our  solitary  excursions,  which  stand  for  resur- 
rection, not  for  burial.  I  should  go  less  often 
to  Solitude  in  search  of  consolation  if  I  had 
not  discovered  in  past  years  that  by  her  help 
I  was  being  taught  to  shun  the  advice  of  Mel- 
ancholy— Forget  thyself  to  marble — and  to 
carry  from  loneliness  to  companionship  an 
improvement  for  active  service  in  the  arena. 
Such  pessimists  as  excel  in  the  art  of  being 
thoroughly  discontented  with  their  lot  may 
believe  me  to  be  the  victim  of  self-deception. 
Be  it  so.  I  have  gone  to  Solitude  for  a  better 
reading  of  earth;  I  have  gone  in  sorrow;  I 
3  c  $1  have 

*~?  ~j 


have  gone  in  turmoil ;  I  have  known  the  pang 
of  convulsive  truancy.  A  part  of  what  I  re- 
ceive, a  part  of  what  I  give  back,  is  now  to 
be  described.  I  hope  it  will  halve  the  sour- 
ness of  at  least  one  vinegared  pessimist. 
^s  Duty  knows,  and  practises,  thousands  of 
plans  for  the  illumination  of  routine.  Con- 
sider all  the  rainbows  she  has  borrowed  from 
Fancy!  If  she  were  nothing  more  noble  than 
a  slave-driver  she  would  not  take  the  trouble 
to  ask  Fancy  for  the  loan  of  even  a  single 
colour,  to  say  nothing  of  seven.  I  found  my- 
self thinking  about  this  side  of  her  genius 
one  morning,  near  the  end  of  a  very  hot  Sep- 
tember, while  I  stood  at  my  open  window  to 
listen  to  a  duet  sung  by  the  breeze  and  a  lime 
that  shades  my  study.  On  a  twig  almost 
within  my  reach  an  acrobatic  titmouse  ap- 
peared to  be  running  unnecessary  risks,  as  if 
in  a  theatre,  to  the  accompaniment  of  music. 
Pleased  by  Duty's  tactfulness,  I  was  on  the 
point  of  turning  from  the  window  to  my 
work,  when  I  heard  with  distinctness  the  soft 

36 


voice  of  Solitude.  To  baffle  the  Sirens, 
Ulysses  poured  wax  into  his  ears;  but  if  Soli- 
tude had  been  chief  of  the  Sirens  she  would 
immediately  have  taught  him  that  the  deaf 
can  hear  her  voice.  With  the  coming  of  the 
call  my  heart  and  brain  were  in  tumult.  I 
seemed  to  glimpse  Duty's  forehead.  There 
was  no  pucker  upon  it.  Down  with  blotting- 
paper!  Down  with  foolscap!  Down  with 
Tyrant  Inkwell!  Rather  than  squabble  all 
day  with  reluctant  parts  of  speech,  I  would 
go  to  some  lonely  place  where  I  could  enjoy 
tonic  hours  without  being  humiliated  by  a 
collar-stud.  For  a  few  moments  I  could  not 
decide  whether  to  choose  a  dingle  about  six 
miles  away  from  my  house,  or  a  green  lane 
rather  nearer,  but  not  less  lonely.  In  the  end 
I  chose  the  green  lane  because  I  thought  it 
would  prove  to  be  a  better  larder  than  the 
dingle;  for  I  had  suddenly  made  up  my  mind 
to  live  on  the  country.  Thousands  and  thou- 
sands of  persons  do  this,  year  in  year  out,  and 
I  could  see  no  reason  why  I  should  not  copy 
37  <%  their 


their  example  for  a  single  day.  Should  I 
take  a  book  with  me?  Should  I  take,  since 
the  green  lane  was  in  Warwickshire,  "As  You 
Like  It"?  Certainly  not;  for  if  Rosalind  in 
doublet  and  hose  were  to  slip  out  of  the  book 
and  begin  her  woodland  adventure  before  my 
eyes;  if  the  melancholy  Jaques  were  to  lie 
along  a  yard  or  two  of  moss  and  gird  at  the 
part  of  man  that  is  sheer  goose;  if  Orlando 
were  to  ease  his  passion  by  wounding,  for 
love's  sake,  the  bark  of  my  favourite  horn- 
beam; if  Touchstone  were  to  make  my  ribs 
sore  by  bantering  the  shepherd,  how  should 
I  be  solitary?  A  man  alone  in  a  library  is  a 
man  jostled  by  a  multitude  of  men,  women, 
fairies,  giants,  gods,  and  angels.  It  is  a  silent 
mockery  of  solitude.  A  man  alone  in  a  wood 
with  "As  You  Like  It"  is  a  man  with  the 
scene  prepared,  the  curtain  up,  the  players 
standing  ready  in  the  wings.  Even  Shake- 
speare, I  decided,  must  stay  upon  his  shelf. 
*%  Skirting  the  parklands  of  a  nobleman 
whose  share  of  the  county  is  a  rather  ostenta- 

38 


tious  share,  I  went  leisurely  along  from  one 
footpath  to  another,  sometimes  testing  with 
my  hand  the  heat  of  the  top  bar  of  a  gate, 
sometimes  stroking  the  cool  body  of  a  beech, 
sometimes  halting  to  watch  the  zigzags  of  a 
butterfly.  The  contrast  between  my  study 
and  the  various  divisions  of  the  landscape  was 
a  radiant  contrast.  Instead  of  an  expanse  of 
plum-coloured  felt  there  was  the  pale  gold  of 
barley  stubble;  instead  of  the  coming  and 
going  of  mental  images  there  were  the  ap- 
pearances and  disappearances  of  that  hedge- 
side  Jack-in-the-box,  the  wren.  Delighted 
by  noting  something  unfamiliar  in  the  famil- 
iar beauties  by  which  I  was  surrounded,  I 
moved  slower  and  slower  in  the  direction  of 
the  green  lane;  for  there  was  much  to  tempt 
me  to  dawdle.  There  was  a  woodpecker  tap- 
ping in  a  spinney  on  the  right.  How  many 
times  would  he  tap  before  stopping  to  rest 
his  beak?  Of  course  I  stood  still  to  count. 
Then  I  stayed  to  find  out  whether  at  his  sec- 
ond bout  of  tapping  he  would  tap  more  or 
39  Sfe  fewer 


fewer  times.  After  this  I  was  compelled  by 
memory  to  go  to  the  west  corner  of  a  long- 
loved  field,  if  only  to  look  at  the  tumble-down, 
grey-green  fencing  that  sprawled  round  the 
pond  with  the  family  of  reeds  on  the  far  side  of 
it.  What  with  pausings  and  brief  excursions 
to  the  right  or  to  the  left,  it  was  nearly  time 
for  lunch  when  at  last  I  reached  the  lane  I 
had  chosen  as  the  headquarters  of  my  holiday, 
and  I  felt  quite  ready  to  begin  to  live  upon 
the  country.  The  possible  meal  was  a  meal  of 
only  two  courses — hazel-nuts  and  black- 
berries. Having  found  a  leafy  dining-room, 
just  large  enough  for  one,  carpeted  with  moss 
and  shaded  by  a  young  hornbeam,  I  marked 
the  place  with  my  cap  and  then  made  a  rough- 
and-ready  basket  out  of  a  dock  leaf,  into  which 
I  began  to  put  the  blackberries  that  were  to 
serve  as  one  of  the  two  courses.  When  the 
basket  was  full  I  took  it  to  the  dining-room. 
Again  I  plucked  a  dock  leaf,  again  I  picked 
a  lot  of  berries,  again  I  went  back  to  head- 
quarters. To  be  a  human  squirrel  gathering 
40 


nuts  in  late  September  was  the  next  thing. 
Apparently  the  hazel  bushes  were  quite  will- 
ing to  be  relieved,  for  every  time  I  shook  a 
branch  they  yielded  nuts  so  generously  that 
very  soon  I  had  enough  to  carry  to  my  chosen 
haunt.  What  a  lunch  I  had!  While  em- 
perors, cooped  up  in  palaces,  were  toying  with 
Frenchified  morsels  and  enduring  the  pres- 
ence of  swarms  of  hirelings,  a  buoyant  runa- 
way from  ink,  seated  upon  moss  and  leaning 
against  the  trunk  of  a  hornbeam,  ate  nuts  and 
blackberries,  and  quaffed  no  other  wine  than 
such  as  was  contained  in  the  fruit.  Poor 
gilded  monarchs!  Poor  imperial  mice 
caught  in  the  trap  of  greatness!  Though  I 
was  glad  they  had  not  discovered  my  green 
lane,  I  could  not  help  feeling  very  sorry  for 
them.  At  that  moment  there  were  three  in 
Europe  without  a  hazel-nut  among  them. 
^fe  But  for  the  sudden  arrival  of  a  blackbird, 
who  was  very  much  alarmed  by  finding  a 
man  where  he  had  hoped  to  find  a  worm, 
there  was  no  interruption  to  prevent  me  from 
41  ^sacrificing 


sacrificing  hour  after  hour  to  Solitude  in  the 
spirit  of  whole-hearted  worship.  Something 
of  the  hornbeam's  dignity  seemed  to  pass 
into  me  while  I  leaned  against  its  trunk.  I 
felt  as  if  the  creases  were  being  smoothed  out 
of  my  life,  as  if  I  should  wrong  Solitude  by 
counting  my  disadvantages  in  her  presence. 
It  was  impossible  not  to  feel  quickened  by  a 
current  of  wholesomeness  flowing  from  her 
and  flooding  me  with  gentle  persistence ;  and 
it  was  impossible  not  to  feel  that  on  my 
return  I  should  be  able  to  repay  Duty,  with 
interest,  for  her  unpuckered  forehead.  Long, 
long  I  sat  there,  without  pandering  to  imme- 
diate griefs,  without  vexing  my  hostess  by 
indignations;  but  when  I  stretched  myself 
flat  on  my  back — the  better  to  enjoy  the 
zenith — I  knew  her  to  be  willing  to  accom- 
pany me  to  the  sky,  the  home  of  imperish- 
able faces.  Too  lovely  to  be  described,  they 
showed  against  the  blue  when  the  forces  of 
silence  and  fancy  and  permitted  heartache 
caused  them  to  tremble  into  delicate  master- 

42 


pieces.  There  was  one  face  fairer  than 
Rosalind's.  Shakespeare's  overwhelming  mis- 
fortune was  that  he  did  not  live  long  enough 
to  see  it;  yet  if  he  had,  he  could  have  done 
it  only  an  injustice  by  means  of  immortal 
words.  For  fear  of  becoming  envious,  I  rose 
to  my  feet  and  went  along  the  lane  to  gather 
my  tea — black  sugar  from  the  brambles,  little 
white  loaves  from  the  hazel  bushes.  I  took 
this  meal  afoot.  If  I  may  be  allowed  to  use 
such  an  expression,  tea  was  more  than  a  mile 
long,  and  was  so  leisurely  a  proceeding  that 
when  I  looked  at  my  big  gold  watch — the 
sun — I  knew  it  was  time  to  turn  my  face 
toward  home.  Besides,  doves  were  cooing 
half-past  six.  I  took  it  for  a  sign  of  a  holiday 
not  misused  that  never  before  had  wooddoves 
seemed  to  put  so  much  comfort  into  their 
voices;  and  it  occurred  to  me  to  wonder  if  it 
was  the  evening  of  His  most  laborious  day 
when  the  Almighty  created  that  masterpiece 
of  sound.  I  think  so;  and  I  think  that  imme- 
diately afterwards  He  must  have  rested. 
43  $s  How 


*%  How  quickly  my  holiday  had  gone!  It 
was  a  little  disappointing  that  on  this  day  of 
all  days  in  the  year  Time  should  have  wanted 
to  discover  if  he  could  run  at  twice  his  usual 
speed.  But  though  he  gave  me  evening's 
fragrance  rather  too  soon,  and  too  soon  estab- 
lished Jupiter  brightly  in  the  heavens,  I 
sauntered  homeward  in  a  grateful  spirit:  a 
man  who  had  succeeded  in  living  upon  the 
country — not  as  a  person  with  a  golden  sine- 
cure, not  as  an  Old  Age  Pensioner  (that  is  to 
come!),  but  as  a  worshipper  of  simplicity  and 
solitude.  While  I  walked  I  remembered  that 
my  day  was  a  short  gospel,  to  be  preached 
to  the  bed-ridden,  to  be  shared  with  my 
friends,  to  be  explained  to  children.  These 
offices  I  have  fulfilled.  My  day  has  glowed 
in  the  eyes  of  the  sick;  it  has  been  a  star  in 
several  houses;  it  has  taught  children  the 
alphabet  of  solitude.  If  this  were  not  so,  then 
I  should  have  misunderstood  my  hostess,  by 
whom  my  heart  had  been  clarified  under  the 
hornbeam  in  the  lonely  lane.  Though  these 

44 


attempts  to  pay  my  debt  prevented  me  from 
feeling  selfish,  it  was  not  till,  a  few  days  after 
my  excursion,  I  stopped  to  speak  to  an  ac- 
quaintance, who  told  me  how  much  he  had 
softened  a  grief  by  going  where  I  had  gone 
and  by  doing  what  I  had  done,  that  I  felt  such 
inward  warmth  as  I  desired  to  feel.  He  had 
not  seen  all  that  I  had  seen.  No  two  persons 
can  ever  see  the  same  landscape.  But  the 
difference  was  delightful.  It  was  good  to  hear 
him  say  that  he  no  longer  felt  as  if  he  were 
a  man  with  a  second-hand  backbone.  Since 
even  now  I  am  very  far  from  being  ouf  of 
debt,  I  go  on  hoping  that  my  gospel  will 
urge  other  listeners  to  be  active  disciples.  In 
human  existence  it  is  by  the  pollen  of  hope 
that  day  after  day  is  fertilized. 
^  There  is  a  sentence  of  two  words  that 
strikes  me  as  being  the  most  withering 
example  of  irony  in  the  annals  of  humankind. 
The  sentence  is,  Know  thyself.  This  is  the 
world's  masterpiece  of  frustration.  When 
this  triumph  of  irony  first  sprang  to  the  lips 
45 


of  its  parent  it  served  the  double  purpose  of 
encouraging  a  listener  to  think  that  he  had 
been  given  a  jewel  of  wisdom,  and  of  causing 
the  speaker  to  enjoy  the  knowledge  that  he 
had  used  such  cunning  as  to  give  a  pebble  the 
appearance  of  a  diamond.  Since  the  pleasure 
most  sought  after  by  the  ironical  is  an  acid 
pleasure,  we  need  not  envy  the  man  who,  by 
means  of  a  piece  of  dissembling — which  is 
the  essence  of  irony — pandered  to  mischief  in 
himself  by  mocking  the  trustfulness  of  others. 
Whoever  the  man  was  to  whom  it  occurred 
thus  to  clothe  darkness  in  the  raiment  of 
light,  he  must  have  felt,  while  he  watched 
the  relief  of  suppliants  in  whose  hearts  he  had 
caused  the  impossible  to  masquerade  as  the 
possible,  that  he,  more  than  any  other  of  the 
fraternity  of  dissemblers,  had  merited  such 
rewards  as  were  set  aside  for  exponents  of  the 
art  that  flourished  by  disguising  despair  as 
hope.  His  curt  phrase  was  the  most  thorough 
verbal  deceit  ever  thought  of  and  uttered  for 
the  baffling  of  those  in  search  of  helpers  too 


honourable  to  use  disguises.  It  persuaded  the 
deceived  to  bless  the  deceiver;  it  robbed 
petitioners;  it  was  the  most  profitable  sen- 
tence of  two  words  ever  spoken.  For  though 
Philosophy,  in  the  days  when  her  critics  were 
far  too  indulgent,  recoiled  from  using  a  foot- 
pad's bludgeon,  she  was  not  above  the  rascality 
of  being  an  elegant  thief.  Since  the  priests  in 
charge  of  Apollo's  temple  at  Delphi  were 
quick  to  see  the  value  to  them  of  this  preg- 
nant catchword  it  mattered  little,  in  their  esti- 
mation, whether  they  stole  it  from  Pythagoras 
or  from  Phemonoe.  It  was  necessary  to  steal 
it.  There  was  a  fortune  in  the  sentence.  Ju- 
venal was  credulous  enough  to  believe  that  the 
precept  came  down  from  heaven.  If  so,  the 
Delphic  priesthood  had  as  much  right  to  it 
as  Pythagoras,  or  the  humble  tiller  of  vege- 
tables in  that  sage's  garden.  Whatever  the 
origin  of  this  formula,  it  was  inscribed  in 
letters  of  gold  over  the  portico  of  the  temple 
at  Delphi,  as  a  bait  for  such  inquirers  as  could 
not  pierce  the  disguise,  which  seemed  to  prom- 
47  $fc  ise 


ise  bewildered  men  a  solution  of  their  prob- 
lems; for,  if  the  priests  could  afford  to  use 
such  an  example  of  wisdom  as  an  advertise- 
ment, pilgrims  naturally  thought  that  there 
must  be  in  reserve  a  light  still  more  illumi- 
nating. 

*fe  But  it  is  hard  for  us  to  believe  in  the 
straightforwardness  of  the  exhibitors  in  golden 
letters  of  the  famous  counsel,  which  probably 
served  them  as  a  weapon  to  be  used  against 
those  who  imagined  their  wisdom  to  be  a  lamp 
for  guidance.  The  soul  of  frustration  having 
been  forced  into  a  pair  of  words,  the  priests 
needed  but  to  discipline  their  eyes  and  their 
facial  muscles  to  be  equipped  for  life  as  de- 
ceivers growing  rich  at  the  expense  of  the 
deceived.  Yet  the  best  thinkers  among  them 
must  have  known  that  man  cannot  know  him- 
self, since  he  is  not  much  more  than  a  ram- 
part of  flesh  and  bone  built  round  a  secret. 
He  contains  a  solitude  into  which  he  yearns 
to  penetrate.  Just  as  the  flower  of  a  daffodil 
never  sees  her  bulb,  so  man  never  sees  the 


.central  part  of  the  mysterious  expanse  he  calls 
his  soul.  Were  it  not  for  agony  and  crisis  he 
would  know  little  more  about  himself  than 
the  bloom  of  the  daffodil  knows  about  her 
bulb.  The  death-bed  of  his  dearest  will  prove 
to  a  man  how  few  steps  he  has  taken,  till  that 
bitter  revelation,  in  his  own  solitude.  As  if 
from  a  distance  incalculably  far  away,  there 
rushes  into  his  breast  a  feeling  that  seems 
almost  powerful  enough  to  tear  the  heart  from 
its  cage  of  bone.  There  is  a  sense  of  arrival. 
That  feeling  has  not  lived  among  the  familiar 
dwellers  in  the  heart,  which  would  long  ago 
have  died  because  of  the  presence  of  such  an 
inhabitant.  Though  this  rending  emotion 
travels  with  the  speed  of  light,  it  cannot  pre- 
vent us  from  knowing  that  it  is  a  traveller. 
Why  the  heart  is  not  sufficient  for  the  heart's 
grief,  without  being  almost  broken  into  frag- 
ments by  the  newcomer,  is  a  mystery  as  great 
as  the  mystery  of  the  traveller's  origin  and 
the  traveller's  route.  He  who  has  felt  this 
messenger  of  agony  throw  his  heart  into  a 
49  Sfe  tumult 


tumult  such  as  mortal  language  cannot  learn 
to  describe,  will  never  again  be  so  small  as  he 
was  at  the  second  before  the  coming  of  the  far- 
travelled  emotion.  The  law  of  compensation 
works.  Though  the  heart  has  been  shocked 
into  terror,  an  addition  has  been  made  to 
knowledge.  It  is  as  if  it  were  now  possible 
for  a  sufferer  to  walk,  without  a  crutch,  a  few 
paces  toward  the  secret  that  he  is  destined 
never  to  unravel  in  the  course  of  his  life  upon 
this  earth.  However  blindingly  our  tears  may 
fall,  we  can  always  perceive  that  this  agony 
is  a  finger-post.  Observing  this,  many  of  us, 
even  while  we  quiver  on  the  rack  of  grief, 
grow  aware  for  the  first  time  in  our  lives  that 
the  surface  of  ourselves,  with  its  markings  of 
what  is  ordinary  and  recurrent,  can  no  longer 
content  us,  and  that  it  will  be  well  for  us  to 
take  hours  from  companionship  and  devote 
them  to  loneliness,  in  the  hope  of  understand- 
ing what  was  revealed  when  a  stranger  to  the 
heart  almost  killed  the  heart,  and  in  the  hope 
of  being  repaid  for  intensity  of  thought  by 
50 


moving,  even  if  at  a  speed  too  slow  to  be  meas- 
ured, toward  discoveries. 
*%  It  must  be  granted  that  a  fragment  of  self- 
knowledge  comes  to  us  by  the  road  of  agony. 
The  earliest  students  of  mankind  perceived 
this,  just  as  they  perceived  how  flimsy  are  the 
defences  erected  by  men  and  women  against 
a  grief  known  for  many  years  to  be  unescap- 
able.  Though  we  prepare  ourselves  week  by 
week,  month  by  month,  for  the  last  scene  at 
the  death-bed  of  our  dearest,  what  a  brittle 
twig  our  spear  of  courage  turns  out  to  be  I 
What  a  covering  of  rotten  rags  the  armour 
of  our  endurance!  With  the  ceasing  of  the 
loved  one's  breath  comes  the  traveller  whose 
presence  means  overwhelming  emotion  and 
flashes  of  a  beyond  too  remote  to  be  other- 
wise glimpsed.  If  this  is  so,  in  spite  of  all 
our  attempts  to  be  prepared  for  the  change 
from  suspense  to  loss,  how  much  nearer  are 
we  driven  to  the  central  secret  when  there 
bursts  upon  us,  as  though  it  were  flame  from 
a  blue  zenith,  a  crisis  provoking  the  law  of  self- 
51  ^preservation! 


preservation  I  We  can  trust  a  crisis  to  speak 
the  truth.  It  is  at  such  a  moment  that  we 
travel,  at  an  incredible  speed,  farthest  from 
the  surface.  Then  we  learn  by  convulsion,  as 
planets  learn.  Then  we  perceive  how  best  to 
expand  the  sentence  written  over  the  portico 
of  the  temple  at  Delphi;  for  we  learn  that 
the  profoundest  of  our  teachers  is  crisis. 
Agony  and  peril  break  through  our  surface, 
affording  us  glimpses  of  the  solitude  we  pro- 
tect without  comprehending.  These  glimpses 
we  never  forget.  They  compel  us  at  times  to 
be  solitary,  and  tempt  us  to  hope  that  by 
pondering  our  discoveries  we  shall  drag  our- 
selves, by  painful  inches,  a  little  nearer  to  the 
masked  truth.  It  would  have  been  an  act  of 
radiant  honesty  if  the  priests  had  inscribed 
upon  the  portico  these  words:  Thou  shall 
never  know  thyself. 

$&  Crisis  seems  to  be  as  whimsical  as  the 
butterfly  that  settles  on  one  flower  merely 
because  it  does  not  settle  on  another.  One  of 
us,  turning  a  corner  of  life,  is  brought  to  an 
52 


abrupt  standstill  by  -the  ribs  of  Death.  He, 
or  a  fellow-creature,  must  die,  so  it  seems,  and 
die  in  an  instant.  The  great  law  bids  him 
survive,  even  at  the  cost  of  killing  a  man  by 
whom  he  has  never  been  wronged.  The  hard- 
won  graces  of  refinement  and  unselfishness 
are  scattered  like  chaff  in  a  storm.  The  tre- 
mendous legislation  by  means  of  which  we 
have  been  forced  up  the  mountain-path  of 
existence  is  luridly  revealed.  Though  the 
crisis  be  solved  without  the  horror  of  blood- 
shed, this  man's  heart  and  brain  are  wounded 
for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Another  passes  along  a 
road  that  leads  away  from  agony  of  soul.  He 
moves  leisurely  between  the  cradle  and  the 
grave,  without  at  any  time  being  driven  to 
snatch  his  life  from  Death  at  the  expense  of 
all  he  most  values  in  himself — the  accumu- 
lated excellence  of  gentleness,  mercy,  wisdom. 
He  somehow  manages  to  edge  his  way  past 
crisis.  Yet  if  he  gains  by  this,  he  loses  also ; 
for  to  those  who  have  died,  as  it  were,  at  one 
moment  and  risen  again  at  the  next,  there  has 
53  Sfe  been 


been  given,  betwixt  death  and  birth,  such 
glimpses  of  the  central  secret  as  can  never  be 
seen  by  untroubled  wayfarers.  Those  who 
have  endured  what  are  the  most  ravening  of 
the  forces  allowed  to  attack  the  spirit  of  man 
will  at  times  need  to  be  solitary,  not  only  for 
the  purpose  of  musing  on  their  experiences, 
but  also  for  those  of  recovering  from  the 
wounds  inflicted  by  terror,  and  of  learning 
how  best  to  apply  the  new  knowledge.  Yet 
even  if  they  have  seen  themselves  for  the 
thousandth  part  of  a  second  in  the  blood-red 
light  of  savagery,  with  all  the  veneers  of  civi- 
lization destroyed,  with  all  the  temples  fallen 
in  ruins,  with  all  the  great  teachers  powerless 
as  corpses,  even  then  they  must  not  permit 
Solitude  (now,  in  truth,  their  necessary 
friend!)  to  breed  in  them  nothing  nobler  than 
melancholy.  The  crisis  will  have  produced  a 
crisis.  Not  easily  will  the  jagged  edges  of 
heart  and  brain  reunite,  even  when  Loneliness 
uses  her  precious  spikenard.  What  though 
the  terrific  cleavage  has  revealed  the  naked 

54 


animal? — the  Adam  whom  no  angel  can  drive 
out  of  his  first  home.  He  has  but  to  be  dis- 
covered to  be  understood;  and  if  his  presence 
is  an  astonishment,  it  need  not  be  a  killing 
grief.  We  are  the  gaol,  not  the  tomb,  of  what 
is  bygone;  and  sometimes  the  Past,  as  if  to 
show  us  that  it  refuses  to  be  buried  for  ever, 
steals  a  fraction  of  a  second  from  the  Present. 
After  all,  the  centuries  have  slowly  fashioned 
in  us  a  being  who  is  master,  till  forked  light- 
ning tears  us  open  from  to-day  to  the  beginning 
of  our  history,  when  we  see  the  prisoner  in  our 
lowest  depth.  It  is  then  that  the  creature  so 
laboriously  moulded  by  ages  of  improvement 
is  most  sharply  tested.  Immediately,  as  if  by 
instinct,  we  turn  to  Solitude  for  help.  The 
moorland?  No.  The  forest?  Yes.  For  a 
brief  season  even  the  sky  must  be  partly 
veiled.  We  feel  safest  among  trees.  There, 
if  we  are  valiant  in  thought,  we  shall  soon 
pass  from  humiliation  to  exultation,  on  con- 
sidering with  how  many  memorials  of  fine 
endeavour  the  path  by  which  we  have 
55  ^3  struggled 


struggled  from  the  savage  to  the  civilized  is 
strewn.  Above  all  else,  be  it  remembered  at 
such  a  critical  hour  that  Solitude  is  dis- 
honoured by  him  who,  after  staying  too  long 
with  her,  takes  away  nothing  more  than  his 
own  satisfaction.  Be  it  remembered  also  that 
if  we  sink  to  melancholy  we  prove  ourselves 
to  be  cowards ;  that  if  we  rise  to  hopefulness 
we  prove  ourselves  to  be  heroes.  Nothing  is 
truer  than  that  we  shall  miss  the  inmost 
teaching  of  Solitude  unless  we  learn  how  to 
watch  with  braver  eyes  Destiny  at  the  work 
of  bunching  together  the  variegated  sprigs  of 
heaven  and  hell  that  make  up  the  posy  we 
call  life. 


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